The USA Presbyterians have acknowledged with these new allowances that "Father, Son and Holy Ghost" are patriarchal leftovers that have been used "to support the idea that God is male and that men are superior to women," according to the panel that studied the issue.

None of these optional trilogies is etched in stone, but are offered as "an educational resource to enhance the spiritual life of our membership," according to Nancy Olthoff, an Iowa laywoman and legislative committee chair.

One can argue - as an editor/friend (and another Catholic-Baptist hybrid) did during a recent conversation - that religion can and should be flexible to accommodate changing times and people's needs. Different folks find different routes to salvation, after all, and adopt a variety of faiths to keep the wolf at bay.

As John Lennon put it: "Whatever gets you through the night." To which God responded: "Whatever is wrong with you people?"

What's wrong is that we live in anti-father, mad-at-daddy times. This is simply the Da Vinci Codification of the church, the dogma of which is "Women good, men bad." Matriarchy good, patriarchy bad. Womb good, oh never mind.

Irony seems to have gone missing as we worship our wombs and swoon over lost goddesses, however. The whole notion, advanced and commodified by Dan Brown (author of "The Da Vinci Code"), that the church sold out women ignores a couple of facts.

First, the Virgin Mary was hardly a bit player in the Catholic Church, which elevated her as the sacred feminine. Second, the Gospels were radically feminist in recognizing women as something more than property.

Gelding the trilogy may make a few new-age Presbies feel virtuous in the moment, but the likely effect longer term will be to animate the fundamentalists who often give religion a bad name. People who feel the Earth moving beneath their feet - their institutions and faith under siege - tend to seek out something more stable and less fluid.

And, ultimately, less tolerant.